A rediscovered classic, with a literary touch

Do you enjoy screwball comedy movies from the 1930s? Then you’ll love this novel, a lark in almost a literal sense, flying high above the English countryside, taking in the whole parade of human folly with chirping delight and impartial wisdom. So sure-footed a writer was Eric Linklater in his day, that when editor Allen Lane launched Penguin Books in...

Classic mythology for the modern reader

The gods of ancient Greece and Rome were not, shall we say, moral exemplars. They waged brutal intergenerational warfare (“Father Sky hated all his children”; Zeus, “raised on Crete hidden from the eyes of his father [Cronus],” led an ultimately scorched-earth revolt to overthrow him). They mated indiscriminately with close relatives (Zeus married his ever-and-rightfully...

Wilde's masterpiece

Publisher's comments:Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. The novel was met with moral outrage by contemporary critics who, dazzled perhaps by Wilde's brilliant style, may have confused the author with his...

Behind closed doors

In 1959, Ken Kesey, then a creative writing student at Stanford University, volunteered to act as a guinea pig in a series of medical trials, partly sponsored by the CIA, into the effects of psychoactive drugs like LSD and mescaline. The experiences he had during these trials fed into the novel he was writing and the result was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Set in a mental hospital...

Ayn Rand's enduring classic

Publisher's comments:Ayn Rand's classic bestseller, Anthem, is the unforgettable tale of a nightmarish totalitarian future—and the ultimate triumph of the individual spirit. First published in 1938, and often compared with Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, this beautifully written story has introduced millions to Rand's provocative worldview.Rand's...

Orwell's last and greatest novel

Publisher's comments:Orwell's final novel, 1984, is the story of one man's struggle against the ubiquitous, menacing state power (“Big Brother”) that tries to dictate nearly every aspect of human life. The novel is a classic in anti-utopian fiction, and a trenchant political satire that remains as relevant today as when it was first published.

Classic books never go out of style

Classics re-imaginedTranslator Burton Raffel gives new life to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The epic poem has long been celebrated for its satiric wit and humor; together on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, 30 strangers pass the time by telling two stories apiece.Raffel is a celebrated scholar whose previous translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies. Retaining the...

Books to make you shiver

Leslie S. Klinger's great virtue as an editor is his sublimely willful and scrupulous disregard for the boundary between historical fact and literary falsehood. In The New Annotated Dracula, he reprises the same "gentle fiction" (as he calls it) of his earlier annotated Sherlock Holmes, treating Stoker's novel as nonfiction: real events happening to real persons. After a brief...

Lovely gifts for literary folks

STEINBECK'S CAMELOT Unexpected gems whether rediscovered works or reissued classics are welcome surprises, and John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is just such a treasure. Christopher Paolini, wunderkind author of the bestsellers Eragon and Eldest, has written a foreword for this little-known Steinbeck work, and included in this edition are letters from the...

The rhyme of the ancient warrior

For nearly 2,000 years The Epic of Gilgamesh was considered the greatest poem ever written. It told of the mighty king Gilgamesh, who, grieving over the death of his friend Enkidu, tried to find immortality. This was a story of the power of love, the inscrutability of the gods and the ultimate fate of all men hero, king or peasant. The tale was respected by kings and studied by priests, until...